Fuchs' sights on Basel after Steaua stalemate

No sooner had the dust – and snow – settled after FC Schalke 04's 0-0 draw at FC Steaua Bucureşti than the Königsblauen's players began preparing for their winner-takes-all confrontation with FC Basel 1893 to decide who joins Chelsea FC in the knockout rounds from Group E. Christian Fuchs insisted that even if Schalke had won in Bucharest they would still have needed a good performance against Basel at home on matchday six so in that respect nothing had changed. Steaua, who will finish at the foot of the section, were also looking forward – to what they hope will be a more successful UEFA Champions League campaign next season.

Christian Fuchs, Schalke midfielder
It is disappointing but nothing has really changed. Even with a victory we would only have been one point ahead of Basel so we would still have needed to beat them in Gelsenkirchen. We know we have to win. We won in Basel 1-0 and nobody thought we would do that so I am pretty confident. With our fans behind us it will be a good atmosphere. They always push us to give more and more, so I am looking forward to the match.

Tonight's game could have ended either way – we could have won, we could have lost, so a draw is OK. It was the goalkeeper's [Ralf Fährmann] first game and he did well. He had some good saves at the end so he can be pleased with his performance. You can always speculate about players that were missing from the team or disallowed goals. But the players who were out there played a good game.

Alexandru Bourceanu, Steaua midfielder
It was a good game but we did not score from the opportunities we had. In the second half we played really well but it was an equal match. They also had chances to score and a draw was a fair result. It was good for us that we were able to create chances and we have hopes now for next season because we are out of this year's competition.

It is realistic to think that it was always going to be difficult for us against teams from England and Germany but here all the people are disappointed with our performances. It has been an experience for us and we have a lot of things to learn. We have seen new things and hopefully next year will be better. I will not be able to play at Chelsea [on matchday six] because tonight I picked up my third booking. I am sorry about that but I do not think it matters too much because we are out of the competition.

Łukasz Szukała, Steaua defender
We had chances to win, particularly when Federico [Piovaccari] had that one-on-one with the goalkeeper at the end but he just could not manage to put it past him. I think we played well and it was good to stop a side of Schalke's quality from scoring. We had done well in the away game in Germany for a long time but then conceded a soft goal and that was it.

I do not think it was our best performance in the group. I think the draw we got in Basel was our best result. They have shown again tonight by beating Chelsea what a good side they are. For many of our players it was a first experience of this level of competition. We are disappointed to have finished in fourth place but we have learned a lot and hopefully next year we can come back in the competition and be stronger.